Border Walls, Boundary Waters, Dumb and Dumber

Uh oh! Donald Trump may have to start talking about building another wall. This wall would be a lot longer than the wall between the United States and Mexico. This one would span the longest non-militarized border between any two countries—the United States and Canada. 

Canada and the 48 continental states share a 3,987 miles border. The border between Canada and Alaska adds another 1,538 miles. By comparison, the U.S.-Mexican border is 1,989 miles.

Why the sudden need to shore up defenses against a country that has been, for all intents and purposes, our soft sister for more than two centuries, even ceding us domination of its national sport, hockey? Islamophobia, of course. Specifically, the acceptance of Syrian refugees. http://nyti.ms/294mHw6

And we all know what comes next, warn the fear mongers, chief among them, The Donald. Terrorists will be embedded among the refugees and sooner, or maybe later, under cover of Canadian residency papers they will slip quietly, make that simply walk, through border passport control and start killing Americans. 

Trump can point to a 2015 U.S. Senate report, “The State of America’s Border Security,” for validation of a plan to wall off the country, top and bottom.

“Security observers have argued that Canada represents a substantial vulnerability, because it provides immigrant visas to individuals who pose a significant threat,” said the report. http://washex.am/1Nzujr8

He can also remind us of Ahmed Ressam who planned to blow up the Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Eve 1999. Ressam was an Algerian al-Qaeda member who had lived in Montreal. He was caught with a bomb in his car by Washington State border security. 

So get ready America for cement mixers and chain link fence planters to be working overtime should Trump get elected president. 

Boundary Waters: One of the joys of writing this blog is the opportunity it affords me to reminisce and reflect on current events associated with my past. Today, July 4, for example, is the 40th anniversary of the successful Israeli raid on Entebbe that freed 100 Jewish hostages from Palestinian and German hijackers and the clutches of Idi Amin, the madman leader of Uganda. 

By coincidence, Gilda and I were at Ben Gurion Airport that day, awaiting a flight to Rome as the triumphant Israelis and the freed captors returned to Israel to a celebration reserved for feats of heroic grandeur such as Lindbergh’s crossing of the Atlantic, V-J Day at Times Square and the inauguration of our first Afro-American president.

Two days ago I was catapulted back 35 years by an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times by former Vice President Walter F. Mondale and Theodore Roosevelt IV, the great grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt. “Protect Minnesota’s Boundary Waters,” they wrote. They opined against a mining proposal that could imperil the region (http://nyti.ms/299T7pE).

I suspect most people seeing the term Boundary Waters had faint ideas about its meaning and the attachment Minnesotans have to it. I, too, would have been mostly ignorant to its meaning had it not been for an October 1981 cover story Chain Store Age did on Dayton’s Department Stores of Minneapolis and its new merchandising concept, Boundary Waters. 

“The Boundary Waters is an area of northern Minnesota along the Canadian border that is one of the few true wilderness regions remaining in the country,” Stephen E. Watson, then Dayton’s sr. vp and general merchandise manager for men’s and women’s apparel, explained (Watson would go on to become president of Dayton Hudson Corp., now known as Target Corp., before assuming executive roles at other retail companies). “The people in the community here see themselves as very outdoors-oriented, active and adventuresome. To them, Boundary Waters have real, as well as symbolic meaning.”

Dayton’s no longer exists, but a scion of the founding family, Mark Dayton, is now governor of Minnesota. He has come out against the mining project. 

Dumb and Dumber: For all his political skills, just how dumb is former President Bill Clinton? And is Attorney General Loretta Lynch dumber for agreeing to meet with him at the Phoenix airport as the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server while secretary of state is still ongoing?

Before he does something dumb again (he always seems to do something that ruffles his wife’s campaigns, as he did in South Carolina eight years ago), he should be confined to grandfather duty full time with only limited public exposure, such as at the Democratic convention. Hillary has more than enough surrogates to campaign for her. She doesn’t need her husband to give Trump any opportunity to ridicule him and her.

Your political witticism of the day, courtesy of whowhatwhy.org:

“The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” —Joseph Stalin

Darkness No More

Literally and figuratively, Gilda and I went to bed in the dark Sunday night.

Tired from a full day of gardening, Gilda drifted off to sleep around 10:30. I followed shortly thereafter, oblivious to the drama about to unfold in the next hour. When I woke around 3:15 I couldn’t immediately fall back to sleep. As I often do at such moments, I turned on my iTouch to play a game of solitaire and then downloaded the latest news from the NY Times. I started with the sports section. Though not a NY Mets fan, I was immediately drawn to the headline, “Mets Win on Field in 14 Innings, but Big News Was Buzzing in the Crowd.”

The first paragraph firmly jolted me awake. “A long, emotional Sunday night came to a happy conclusion on Monday morning for the Mets, who beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 2-1, in 14 innings in a game that became a backdrop for the nation’s reaction to the news of the death of Osama bin Laden.”

Quickly turning to the main news section, I devoured the articles. After about 15 minutes I couldn’t contain my excitement. When Gilda shifted slightly in bed, I took advantage of the opportunity to ask if she were awake. I said Osama bin Laden had been killed.

For the next hour we read our iTouches, sharing tidbits of information gleaned one article ahead or behind the other. Until Gilda told me, I completely missed, for example, the sentence at the end of the second paragraph of the main news story stating bin Laden’s body was buried at sea. We watched a recording of President Obama’s speech. Written by the president himself, it was said, it was a great, moving speech.

Throughout Monday I was partially paralyzed with interest, as news morsel after news morsel trickled out. I was amused while CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was interviewing former Bush secretary of state Colin Powell. The graphics people inserted a picture of bin Laden’s compound outlined in red. Amused because the outline resembled the borders of the state of Israel.

Bin Laden was taken down Sunday, New York time, the same day Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, was commemorated.

Political leaders of both parties praised President Obama. Republicans included George W. Bush in their praise. Understandable. Perhaps surprisingly, Rush Limbaugh heaped praise on a president he usually excoriates. He hailed Obama for continuing the Bush policies in the Middle East and for keeping Guantanamo open, but mostly for overruling the military’s desire to strike the compound from the air. Obama insisted on special forces on the ground, said Limbaugh.

Donald Trump congratulated Obama and the armed forces. Sarah Palin, however, revealed more of her petty, bitchy character by failing to acknowledge President Obama’s involvement. Hamas showed the world its true colors as a terrorist organization by calling bin Laden a “holy warrior” and labeling his killing an “assassination.”

The proficiency of our strike force reminded me of the Israeli raid on Entebbe in 1976 and the more recent American success rescuing the crew and captain of the freighter seized by Somali pirates.

There will be those who bemoan we didn’t bring bin Laden back alive to face interrogation and trial. I won’t.

There will be those who question if he’s really dead. I won’t.

No matter how many terrorists are captured or killed, the war on terrorism will go on and on and on. It only takes one radical to keep it going. But we should never forget that our liberties are at stake, that terrorists win not by murdering scores, hundreds, even thousands of our citizens, but rather by scaring us into stripping away the freedoms upon which our country was founded.

Almost 10 years ago, while on a business trip to Phoenix, I slept through the morning attacks of September 11, awakening in time to see the second tower collapse. Last night I slept through the initial reports of our victory over the archetype of terror. How strange.

A Day to Remember

Happy Fourth of July!

Arguably the most memorable U.S. Independence Day celebration in recent history was that of 1976, the 200th anniversary of our nation’s founding. For New Yorkers, the thrill of the day was crowned by Operation Sail, the majestic parade of tall ships into the harbor, passed the Statue of Liberty and up the Hudson River.

Gilda and I missed it all. We were out of the country. But don’t be disappointed for us. We were witness instead to perhaps the most delirious, wondrous celebration of all—the return of the hostages to Israel from the raid on Entebbe (just in case you’re too young to remember the details, here’s a Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Entebbe).

Part one of our vacation was to culminate that morning with a flight from Ben Gurion Airport to Rome. Our Israeli friends Yakov and Chaya drove us to the airport but it was nearly impossible to gain entry, even with Yakov’s military pass. It seemed half the country had converged on the site to welcome home the 103 rescued hijacked Air France hostages and the 100 Israeli commandos who miraculously freed them at the Ugandan airport while suffering only five injuries and one death, that of Jonathan Netanyahu, brother of the current Israeli prime minister.

Regrettably, we couldn’t stay too long to enjoy the moment. Before boarding our flight I bought an Israeli newspaper and haltingly deciphered some of the mission details for Gilda. In Rome we marveled at the headlines and pictures describing the rescue in the Italian newspapers. We felt very proud—proud to be Jewish. Proud to be American. Proud to be part of two democracies that have stood up against tyranny.

Lots of water has flowed over the proverbial dam during these last 34 years. The Iran hostage crisis. Intifadas. Lebanon. Iraq. 9/11. Al-Qaeda. Afghanistan. Gaza. Somalia. Serbia. Croatia. Too many wars, too many battles, too many disappointments, and too many points of contention between Israel and the United States. It is not easy being optimistic. I think I’m hot-wired as a journalist to be pessimistic, cynical, on public events. But I still must believe that for all their differences, Israel and the United States will find common resolution to their individual and joint problems. They do, after all, share the joy each year of July 4.